Category: Video

While I Would Not Trust Ron Paul with My Lunch Box,

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When Barney Frank says that he supports an audit of the Federal Reserve, and that the bill will pass the House in October, and I believe that his assesment is an honest one.

That being said, I think that the Senate is more receptive to Bernanke’s protestations as to the need for opacity independence, and have been more thoroughly bribed by Wall Street are more concerned about market repercussions, while Obama’s economic advisors are Wall Street stooges and influence peddlers very supportive of the current regime at the Fed, which makes his signing a bill dubious.

As to Representative Paul, it’s a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day.

The Best Speech that Ted Kennedy Ever Gave

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How many good men must we give before we finally face the fact that the weakness in our society is a weakness in ourselves?

It wasn’t his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1980.

It was in Sitka in 1968, though not too many people heard, or saw it, because it was given to the Alaska state Democratic Party Convention in Sitka in 1968, talking about the assassination of Martin Luther King and its aftermath.

Not a whole bunch of people have heard it, because he gave at the but my mom was in the audience, and she recalled looking around and watching political hacks on either side of her, with tears streaming down their faces.

You can find the speech, along with introductions by both Senator Ernest Gruening and Walter Eugene “Gene” Guess Speaker of the Alaska State House of Representatives, who my father worked with when we were in Alaska.

I downloaded the video to split and Youtube it from the Alaska state archives.


Part 1 of 2


Part 2 of 2

Mixed Emotions Here

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Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) described Senator Charles Grassley’s “Pull the plug on Grandma” talking point as “Treason” (0:41 on the video).

It’s refreshing to see someone pushing back on Republican rhetoric, but there is a reason that treason is the only offense specifically outlined in the Constitution: it’s there because the Kings of England repeatedly misused the charge to go after politically inconvenient people.

So it’s nice to see pushback, but I am far more comfortable with how Barney Frank handles it.

Of course, Massa is a Democrat, which means that he will likely apologize in the next few days.

Have I Mentioned that I Love Barney Frank*

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Here he is taking on some teabaggers, though I would suggest that people who think that Act Pink does any good listen to his comments toward the end, when he says that, “Disruption never helps your cause. It makes you look like you are afraid to have rational discussions. You just drive people away.”

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

“These People Are Unappeasable”

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Krugman nails it on MSNBC:

Of course, this does not prevent the White House from capitulating on the public option, because, as I’ve said before, Barack Obama does not care about healthcare reform, he cares about being able to sign some sort of healthcare reform bill, even if it is bad and has no real reform, because he gets to claim success.

They are talking Co-Ops, which we know won’t work, because they haven’t worked. If they were even marginally successful, we would see hundreds of them, some of them huge, and we don’t….They can be counted on the fingers.

Flying Saucers News

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Nothing particularly sinister or Area 51 here, it’s just that the former GFS (Geoff’s Flying Saucer, Ltd), now Aesir, is continuing to develop their Coanda effect VTOL UAV, which uses a blower and the Coanda effect (earlier post here) to get the desired characteristics, has come up with a 1000kg payload concept, the Hoder.

You can see more pictures here, and there is a video below.

It appears to be stable, and it has an advantage over a ducted fan in that the entire bottom of the aircraft could be used to hand sensors or weapons.